The television network Al Jazeera has been considered a sort of CNN of the Arab world, at least until now. Records have been found showing that high-ranking employees of the network worked for the Iraqi intelligence service. Where they agents of Saddam, or are they victims of targeted misinformation?

Obtaining an interview with Ahmed Chalabi is almost impossible these days. The head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the US administration's favored candidate for the political reorganization of the country, is making himself scarce.

The only exception has been Abu Dhabi TV, which recently landed an interview with Chalabi. His only condition was that the interview had to be broadcast live. The reason for his request became clear within a few minutes.

Chalabi wanted to settle a score with the channel's competitor, the Al Jazeera network, which is headquartered in the Qatari capital, Doha. Its editors had repeatedly criticized him as being a puppet acting at the bidding of the United States. Al Jazeera, Chalaba complained, would be well-advised to put its own house in order, claiming that the network had been nothing but a willing instrument of the Iraqi intelligence service.

To support this claim, the head of the INC read passages from a document that his colleagues has found among the files of the Iraqi intelligence service, Muchabarat. According to these documents, a meeting took place between Al Jazeera director Mohammed Jassim al-Ali and the Iraqi embassy's intelligence attaché in Doha. Apparently, the conversation dealt with problems the network was having with the Iraqi Ministry of Information.

A few days after Chalabi's appearance, the London-based "Sunday Times" added fuel to the fire. The newspaper published further details and reported that two letters from the head of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, to the head office of the network in Doha had been funneled to Saddam Hussein's intelligence agents using "Jazeera 2" as a source. It was also claimed that two cameramen had worked for the Muchabarat.

Should the documents prove to be authentic, this would have far-reaching consequences, not only for the network, but also for the entire media landscape in the Arab world. After all, the network, founded in 1996 by the Qatari Emir, Sheik Hamad Bin Chalifa al-Thani, has truly revolutionized journalism in the Arab world.

In spite of the network's clearly Islamic bent, the editorial staff orients itself toward Western standards of reporting: fresh, gripping, and without fear of authority. Fueled by this image, the network became the fixed star of truth for 35 million viewers between Morocco and Oman, and was also held in esteem by the Western media as a sort of CNN for the Arab world. Was this assessment premature?

In any event, documents have been found in Baghdad in recent weeks that are certainly likely to cause a few headaches among executives at Al Jazeera. The documents, which are available to DER SPIEGEL, bear the signatures of the heads of the intelligence service, the M5 department (correspondents), the attaché in Doha, and other departments of the Muchabarat. They suggest that not just cameramen, but also high-ranking employees of the network worked as informers for Saddam's thugs.

The code name Jazeera 2, at least according to the papers, was used by the director of the International Program Exchange department, Shamil Nassir Sarsam. Sarsam, an Iraqi who had previously worked as a news anchor for the English-language version of Iraqi State Television in Baghdad, joined the Emirate's network when it was founded a little more than six years ago.

By as early as July 1997, the attaché at the embassy in Doha reported to the intelligence service department at the Foreign Ministry in Baghdad that he had successfully recruited the candidate. In a letter to the "Research and Information Analysis/2" department, the writer claims that he had met with Sarsam "and asked him to work with the embassy on certain matters that served the interests of the country." According to the letter, Jazeera 2 "declared, without hesitating, that he was prepared to do everything that would be asked of him."

The documents indicate that by November 2001 Sarsam had managed to become one of the Iraqis' key figures and, among other things, had obtained information about colleagues. The director of the Mucharat's M5 department provided his colleague at M4 with "information about code Jazeera 2," including the agent's real name, Shamil Nassir Sarsam, "an instrument that meets all our requirements with respect to the investigation of Al Jazeera."

Attached to the documents were two letters from Osama bin Laden, which "the aforementioned person from the station in Doha delivered." M5 suggests "instructing station Doha" to "offer a gift" to the supplier as a reward for his services, and to submit "the invoice, in keeping with regulations, to the main office."

In late January 2000, the contacts at the Foreign Ministry also discovered just how successful Jazeera 2's spying activities were: "We have a good relationship with most of the Iraqis who work at Al Jazeera," 34 in total (a list with names and departments was appended). "As a result of our relationships to most of them and their willingness to cooperate with us, our interests at Al Jazeera and its field offices are represented."

Al Jazeera has been silent on the matter. In the middle of last week, the network was presented with the allegations and asked to respond. At Al Jazeera's request, even the documents were sent to the network. However, no response had been issued by Friday evening. Press speaker Jilad Ballut said, defensively, "we will only comment after a legal investigation."

The allegations will not be easy to refute. Shortly after the fall of Baghdad, soldiers operating on behalf of Chalabi's INC, the Free Iraqi Forces, entered the city and confiscated about 60 tons of records. They are now in storage in a secret location and under tight security.

There is evidence to suggest that the documents are real. In many respects, they match files that were found directly in the bombed main headquarters of the Muchabarat. Most of those documents are also handwritten and correspond in detail - in terms of the letterhead, date line or form of co-signing - to the documents held by the INC. In addition, all Iraqis who officially wished to work in other countries required the approval of a commission staffed by both employees of the Foreign Ministry and officers of the intelligence service and the secret police. Nevertheless, a certain amount of skepticism is warranted, not just because the INC collaborates closely with the US Defense Department, which already has two teams of analysts on site. The questionable, and perhaps even falsified claims of the US administration with respect to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are also grounds for careful evaluation of the documents.

The US government and its allies, both during and after wars, have used misinformation as a weapon too many times, such as during "Operation Desert Storm" in 1991. At the time, an alleged nurse from Kuwait reported to a shocked world public that Saddam's soldiers had torn babies from incubators in her hospital and killed them. It was subsequently revealed that the entire story had been fabricated. The PR agency Hill & Knowlton was helping the Kuwaiti sheiks fight their propaganda battle, and had the daughter of a Kuwaiti diplomat impersonate the nurse.

In the Al Jazeera case, however, the situation appears to be different, at least according to the evidence revealed to date. Should the documents prove to be genuine, this would serve as the young network's maximum credible accident, one which has thus far been viewed in the West as an exception to the rule. The "pro-Arab objectivity" consistently claimed by the network would not change this perception. On the contrary: Al Jazeera shows images that US and British propaganda strategists wanted withheld. They are images of the ugly side of the war: civilian bombing victims in Afghanistan and Baghdad, captured and dead US soldiers in Iraq.

Even the fact that the Taliban allowed Al Jazeera to remain in the country when all other journalists were forced to leave Afghanistan did not tarnish the network's reputation, nor was it damaged by its preferred treatment by the Al Qaeda terror network, whose leaders had their messages disseminated almost exclusively through Al Jazeera - most recently last week, when it broadcast the call to arms by Aiman al-Zawari, the terrorist organization's number two man.

At any rate, Director Ali had allowed an interview with Osama bin Laden that had been conducted in November 2001 to simply disappear into an archive. The terrorist leader had insisted that the interview be broadcast in its entirety. "We do not allow people to give us instructions," explained Ali at the time.

This was one of the reasons why allegations brought by US Secretary of State Colin Powell during the Iraq campaign did not affect the network's credibility. Powell had criticized Al Jazeera for serving as the mouthpiece of the Iraqi regime and for inciting the Arab masses.

Shortly thereafter, the opposite seemed to have been demonstrated. The Iraqi Ministry of Information, under Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf, asked Taiser Aluni, the network's star reporter, to leave the country immediately. Diar al-Umari, Baghdad correspondent for many years, had his license revoked by Sahhaf's men. Only 48 hours later, both men were permitted to continue working - possibly for obvious reasons.

Umari also plays a role in the documents that have been found. They contain a memo from the director of the M14 department to the chief of the Muchabarat from the summer of 2000. "We would like to inform you that comrade Shahab Ahmed Hamada knows the Iraqi Diar al-Umari." This is followed by personal information and a note that Umari worked as an announcer for Iraqi satellite television and then as Al Jazeera's Baghdad correspondent.

According to the documents, the references to the journalist were entirely in keeping with the wishes of the administration. His uncle Mashar was a high-ranking functionary in the ruling Baath party and had, according to the documents, already "fought with comrade Shahab in southern Lebanon and Jordan."